


they call me a little grown up

by tosca1390



Category: Psy-Changeling - Nalini Singh
Genre: F/M, Gen, Next-Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-13
Updated: 2014-07-13
Packaged: 2018-02-08 15:29:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1946406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca1390/pseuds/tosca1390
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Her first memories are of sunlight, love, and warmth. </i>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <i>Sand under her little soft toes, pale-gold against her coffee-smooth skin. She pats at the shifting grains underneath her, delighted. Sensory joys, the rainbows in her mind. She tips her face up to the sun and laughs. </i></p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <i>“She likes it here,” her mother says above her head.</i></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Kaleb and Sahara adopt a baby empath. This is some of her story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	they call me a little grown up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magisterequitum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/gifts).



> WOW. So, one day, Jordan says, oh hey, Grace and I decided that Kaleb and Sahara should adopt a baby empath and be a family. 
> 
> And this is where my brain took me. 
> 
> So, this is for Jordan, on the occasion of her birthday. There is a lot more to this universe than is demonstrated here. However, there is only so much typing a girl can do. My loveliest Jordan, I do hope you enjoy!!!

*

Her first memories are of sunlight, love, and warmth. 

Sand under her little soft toes, pale-gold against her coffee-smooth skin. She pats at the shifting grains underneath her, delighted. Sensory joys, the rainbows in her mind. She tips her face up to the sun and laughs. 

“She likes it here,” her mother says above her head. There is only love enveloping her, her mother’s fierce affection a constant. The breeze is sweet through her fine baby hair. There are no words in her mind, no connected thoughts. She thinks in feelings, in amorphous sensation that soon she will link to words: _warm, soft, kind, love, good_. 

A cool large hand settles on her back, holding her securely as she pats her hands against the grainy sand. “Like her mother,” her father says, husky and even. _Safe_ , she thinks, a giggle escaping her throat. _Safe here_.

Her mother laughs. The sun is bright. Waves crash in the distance, a soothing sound. 

*

It’s hard to have a favorite place in their home. 

The kitchen is always bright and warm. Mama likes to cook and bake, and they will do it together. When it snows they make cookies, sugar and cinnamon and chocolate chip and molasses and lemon; when it’s summer they make salads and pies, golden crusts and herby dressings over corn and cucumber and squash. They will have big dinners, with Uncle Judd and Aunt Brenna and Aunt Faith and Uncle Vaughn, and Aunt Mercy and Uncle Riley, the table in the dining room set with the good china – which Mama says it’s a miracle they haven’t had to replace it yet, and she smiles at Papa, and Elena doesn’t get it – and candles and big wide dishes full of stuffing and mashed potatoes and salad. 

Her bedroom is a sanctuary. Only Caitlin, Aunt Mercy and Uncle Riley’s daughter, has been in it. It is ocean blues and greens, like being at the beach; Mama says their first trip together was to the beach, and Elena remembers sand, and Papa’s hand on her hair, and love. Elena will crawl under the canopy bed (a princess, Papa calls her sometimes, his princess, but never when anyone else is around) with Judd (dog Judd, not Uncle Judd; the name makes everyone laugh and she can’t figure out why) and pretend they are the only things in the world, hiding away from everything else in a kingdom of oceans and sand. Bookshelves cover the walls and she runs her fingers over the spines, the physical touch a pleasure. 

When she was quite young, the koi pond used to scare her. She remembers a dream when an alligator crept out of the koi pond and tried to eat her feet; she woke screaming, running for her parents’ room. But not even her own terror could overwhelm her impression of her parents’ fears for her, the secrets dark and silent under their own psychic senses. She stopped crying over nightmares for a time, after that; there are worse things in the world that could happen, and she doesn’t want to know what they are. 

Papa’s office, though. She likes his office. It smells of pine and the wind over the plains outside the house, of books and solidity. With Judd at her feet, she climbs the shelves and touches the slab of wood on which his name is etched; the love embedded into the carving is still apparent, from years past. She sits in his chair – sometimes, she lets Judd come up and sit with her too. Sometimes, they fall asleep in the window seat, her head pillowed on Judd’s scruff. 

Her home is her favorite place, with Mama and Papa and their friends, sometimes, and Judd, the best dog in the universe. She never wants to leave. 

*

Mama tells her she met the Kincaid kids when she was a baby, but Elena doesn’t remember. Her first memory with them is of trees, of high tough pines and a grassy carpet for the ground, of a cabin surrounded and protected by nature. She remembers the feeling of it; her insecurity, her mother’s enthusiasm, Mercy’s kindness, the children’s curiosity.

_I hope they like me_ , she thinks, squinting into the California sunlight. 

Their one girl – Caitlin, a leopard, if she remembers Mama’s information correctly, scrambles down the front steps to meet Elena and her mother. Her hair, a wavy golden red like her mother’s, streams down her back, but she is olive-skinned, like Uncle Riley. 

“You got so tall!” she exclaims, reaching out to take Elena’s hand in hers. “I remember when you were a baby.”

Elena peeks up at her mother. Mama smiles and lets go of her hand. 

“Go on, play. Aunt Mercy and I will be right here,” she says, voice warm and full of love. The bond between them surrounds her, envelopes her in comfort and affection. 

Two of the boys – Carlos, with ruby-red hair cut close to his scalp and eyes as bright as Mercy’s, and Liam, light-brown hair shot through with red – rush past and shift into their animal forms. Carlos is a handsome wolf, reddish-brown fur, while Liam is a leopard with reddish rosettes offset by pale coloring. Elena holds onto Caitlin’s hand and watches, fascinated. The air is suffused with sunlight and playfulness; Elena’s shielding, Papa-taught, relaxing under the comfort of it. This feels like home, almost like her real home. 

“I just turned eight,” Caitlin says to her, moving into the grass and plopping down. “Well, I guess we all did.” She wrinkles her nose. “I hate sharing a birthday, especially with these morons.”

“You’re the moron,” a boy’s voice calls from behind. Elena tips her head back and meets dark eyes, like chocolate, and a stern face. But there is warmth there, as he drops down to set next to her, his hair gleaming nearly black in the sunlight. 

“Shut up, Declan,” Caitlin mutters. 

_Declan_ , Elena repeats in her mind, sending a mental image to her father, far away at work. _This is Declan_. The rainbow sparks in her mind glow, sharpen; there is something different about this Kincaid boy, the eldest, the wolf in the image of his father. 

After a moment, she feels Papa’s smile in her mind. _Is he being nice?_

_Yes, Papa._

_Good._

“I’m five,” Elena says, stretching her bare legs out into the grass. She plays with the hem of her blue skirt, picking at the eyelet pattern. Her skin feels very warm. She can feel the brush of his elbow against hers. 

“I remember dinner at your house. Your dad showed us the koi pond,” Caitlin says animatedly. 

“Do you like piggyback rides, Elena?” Declan asks, voice even. 

Elena blinks up at him, tilts her head. “What are those?”

Caitlin drops her hand and claps. “Oh, yeah, Declan! Show her!”

Sighing, Declan rises. He is already tall, at least three inches taller than his brothers. There is a warmth in his eyes and in his soul that she senses, shield or no shield. It reminds her of how Papa and Mama are together; happy, solid, content. 

He crouches in front of her, his back to her front. Glancing over his shoulder, he gives her a hint of a smile. “Hop on.”

She looks over at her mother, sitting on the porch steps with Mercy. Mama meets her eyes, her gaze so bright and deep blue, and nods with a smile. 

So, Elena rises and steps up, sliding her arms around Declan’s neck. His thin but tough arms slide under her knees and he rises to his full height gracefully. She gasps, delighted. 

“You okay?” he asks, voice low. Ahead of them, Caitlin, who has shifted into the golden leopard like her mother’s form, pounces on her brothers with glee. 

Nodding, Elena holds on tight. “Fun,” she says with a smile. 

A laugh rumbles in his chest. “Then let’s run.”

They dart into the forest, leaving Mercy’s warnings to take care and not go far into the forest. But Elena leaves it behind and opens her eyes wide to the emeralds and sharp blues of the trees and skies, the sound of leaves and grass under his feet, the blood flushing her cheeks. She wraps skinny arms around his neck tightly and laughs, laughs at the sheer joy. Her shielding relaxes and she can feel his exhilaration, the animal instincts riding under the skin. 

It is freedom. 

* 

He gets his first scar for her when she is ten, and he is thirteen. 

Perhaps he doesn’t think of it that way; but she always does. The trees surrounding Mercy and Riley’s cabin (expanded over time, once multiples were implied in her first pregnancy) are thick and flush with branches, perfect for climbing. Elena’s father is meeting with Hawke and Lucas, a meeting of power players; Mama took this time to bring Elena to visit Caitlin, but the older girl is at an outdoor lesson with Rina, one of the senior soldiers. 

Declan, though, is home, the only Kincaid-Smith child there. So, while Mercy and Sahara sit on the front porch of the well-worn, well-loved cabin, Elena drags Declan into the woods and grins up at him. 

“You’re tall now,” she says, tucking dark curls behind her ears. Her hair is as wild as her spirit, Mama likes to say. 

He smirks a little, and Elena feels nothing but joy from the sensation. Sascha has taught her how to shield, how to build feedback loops into her internal shields so that she never overloads, never takes too much emotion in from others. As a 9.5 on the Gradient, she has potential for great power; Papa says so all the time. Her specialization is like Sascha’s rather than like Jaya or the other M-Empaths she has worked with before. In the back of her mind, she know she should have her shields thicker, to keep his emotions from mixing with hers. 

She likes how it feels, though. It feels – special. And right. 

“Growth spurt. Carlos is already almost six-foot,” he says, sticking his hands into his jeans pockets. He isn’t that tall yet, but she imagines he will be. He’s still thin and lean, not the muscled wall his father is. 

Elena blinks and runs up to the nearest tree trunk, a thick California oak. “My papa taught me how to climb trees.”

He tilts his head, dark eyes assessing. “Wolves don’t climb trees.”

She wrinkles her nose. “Kids do,” she says, slightly petulantly. 

His grin is easy. He likes to spend time with her. He can’t fake that, not with an empath. She claps her hands and waves him over. “Have you ever?”

“Cait likes to,” he says, giving Elena a boost to the first low-hanging branch. 

She wraps thin arms around the branch and breathes in, the dirt and fresh leaves and woodsy smell that she never gets at home. She loves her home, loves the house her parents have made for each other and her, but there is a strange warmth she has when she’s in these woods, a familiarity she accepts. “Come on!”

She turns and scrambles up to the next branch, listening for the sounds of him behind her. When she looks back, he is pulling himself up, shaking his head. “If Uncle Hawke saw me,” she hears him mutter. But he is pleased. He is glad. 

Elena shuts her eyes and laughs. She goes up high – too high, Papa would say. He is always careful to watch how fast and how high she climbs. He has never let her fall. But there is something freeing about pushing herself, pushing past the security of her parents’ gaze. When she stops at last, she is halfway up the tree. She sits with her back against the trunk, peering through the thick leaves to the trees beyond. Squirrels and birds swoop and scatter around her. She kicks her legs, sighing in deep simple pleasure. 

“You’re practically a cat!” Declan calls up to her. Four branches down, he stops and sits in an echo of her position, his white t-shirt loose around his shoulders and chest. She grins and waves. 

“Caitlin and I practice!” she calls back. But only ever when Papa is around. This is the first time she has climbed on her own. The thrill of it entices her. 

He shakes his head, leaning back against the tree trunk. His eyes fall shut. When she ought to watch the animals and the flora this high up as a part of her natural science classes, as that would help advance her mind, she watches him instead. She likes watching people, she always has. Mama takes her to farmer’s markets, has done so since she was a baby; she likes to look at what people buy, how they taste the fruits and vegetables. She likes sensation and feeling, physical and mental; Papa says it is a good thing, but she has to try and not intrude or be impolite. 

Still, she watches Declan, the deep tan of his skin, his dark hair he cuts close to his scalp. Contentment washes through her. She shuts her eyes, looks out into the PsyNet with its honeycombs and stars, and wishes she could see Declan there too. 

“Are you still being homeschooled?” he asks after a long spell of quiet with just the breeze and animals for company. 

She kicks her legs, opening her eyes. “Until I’m thirteen. Then I’m going away for school, I guess,” she says, wrinkling her nose. 

He looks up at her. “You don’t want to?”

She shrugs. “Mama and Papa are good teachers.”

“You could have friends.”

She blinks, a nick of a wound touching within her rainbow mind. “I have friends,” she says slowly. 

Straightening, he rubs his palm over his head. “I meant – more friends.”

“I have Caitlin and Regan,” she protests, hurt blooming in her chest. Caitlin has been her friend since she can remember, and Regan, Rina and Aden’s son, is just two years older than her. They exchange book suggestions and roll their eyes at their fathers. 

“And me,” he says quietly. And there is hurt in his voice there, too. 

“Of course you,” she says plaintively. “And Selina.”

He huffs. “Selina is trouble.”

“I’ll tell on you,” she teases, grinning. Selina is a year younger than her, and is a troublemaker. Uncle Judd says she’s the best of both Hawke and Sienna, and she’s a terror now, and will be a terror later in the best way. Elena sometimes wishes she could be more like Selina; fierce and playful and smart. 

Declan pales, and she giggles. “I would never tell,” she says very seriously. 

He grins up at her. She thinks she can feel it right in the deepest part of her heart. 

“I just – I don’t want to go to Psy school,” she says after a while, drumming her hands on the tree branch. The sun peeks through the leaves, beating on the back of her neck. It’s hot up here, inside of the tree cover. “I don’t think they’ll like me.”

“Who wouldn’t like you?” he asks, all earnest surprise. Her heart thumps. She wants to take it all in for herself, hold it in the deepest parts of herself. 

“It’s different here. Nobody is scared of Papa here,” she says softly. “Out there – out there – “

“I’m scared of your dad. That doesn’t mean I can’t be your friend,” he says, a flush rising to his cheekbones. 

She blinks again. “Oh.”

“Your dad would kill me if you fell, Elena. Will you come down here?” he asks. She can hear the dominant wolf in his voice. It isn’t an order. But he could have made it one. 

Pouting, she begins to descend. “You’re just a scaredy-cat,” she mutters, palms damp with sweat. 

“Am not,” he mutters, just loud enough for her to hear. 

She laughs, landing on the tree branch next to his with ease. 

_Elena, come back to the cabin. Papa’s meeting is over._

Her mother’s warm telepathic voice fills Elena’s mind. She sighs. “We have to go back.”

When she would start to descend, he holds out a hand. “Me first,” he says, voice awkwardly gruff. Changes are happening for them both, she thinks. Soon he will be a copy of his dad, all gruff and tall. She wonders if he will still want to be her friend. 

The thought of losing him terrifies. She slips halfway down the tree, with him two branches below her, her palms damp with sweat. For a moment, she scrambles for a grip, and then she drops. She has never fallen before. 

Terror grips her, coloring her shields. She lets out a yell and then there are arms around her. Declan tucks her into his chest and they drop from fifteen feet up. All she sees is his t-shirt, all she feels is the tight iron grip of his arms around her. She lands on top of his chest as he twists to the side, coming down hard on his left elbow. Blood scents the air. Ears ringing, she scrambles out of his arms and kneels next to him, eyes fixed on his bent left arm. 

Broken. Blood. 

His pain swamps her open shields and she puts her hands on his chest, tears burning behind her eyes. “Declan, I’m sorry – “ she sobs as she tries to gather his pain in her trembling psychic fingertips, his fear, his worry. He holds onto her wrist with his right hand and grits his teeth, jaw showing white under his tan. 

“I can take it – Elena, don’t take it on – “ he rasps out. 

_Elena!_ Mama cries mentally.

Then, Papa appears. 

His shadow falls over her and she gulps down her tears. “It’s my fault!” she babbles, voice thick. “Papa, don’t – “

Face motionless, Papa kneels down next to Declan, doesn’t touch him. His eyes are very dark, starless. “I’ve telepathed Judd,” he says, voice cool and steady. “He will bring Lara. Can you sit up?”

Elena scrubs at her eyes as Declan nods, inching himself up to a sitting position. His breathing is thin and harsh, and he holds not only his arm but his sides. Their eyes meet for an instant. 

“I’m _sorry,_ ” she whispers.

“Are you okay?” he asks as her father places a steadying arm around his shoulder. “Elena, you’re okay?”

She nods, tearful once more. There are footsteps coming from the direction of the cabin, and soon Elena is enveloped in Sahara’s arms, her mama checking her for injuries. Papa stays with Declan even when Mercy arrives, even when Uncle Judd brings Lara. His arm remains around Declan’s shoulders, and Elena wants to hug them all. 

She hugs her mama, instead. 

“We were just climbing,” she says much later, tucked in bed as Mama sits on the edge of her bed and smooths the curls from her brow. “I’ve never fallen before, Mama.”

Mama’s eyes, blue like oceans, darken. “Your papa made sure you didn’t fall,” she says softly. “And so did Declan.”

Elena curls into herself, like a comma. She wants Judd the dog to come sleep on her bed, but she isn’t a baby anymore. He’s very old now, older than her, and sometimes can’t jump onto the bed. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. 

“It’s okay, baby. It was an accident. Declan’s going to be just fine,” Mama murmurs, and kisses her cheek. 

(Years later, when Elena has Declan naked in her bed, in her apartment overlooking the San Francisco bay, she kisses his left arm, and remembers.)

 

*

Not every moment is kind. Not every comfort is enough. 

Silence has fallen and the races are more of a cooperating sort than ever before. But Elena’s father is Kaleb Krychek, and there are insinuations that never fade away, not even with time and parenthood and the resurrection of the Empaths. _Princess_ , her parents call her sometimes, in teasing fun, in love, in warmth. _You are our princess_.

It is not nice when it comes in the form of a taunt. 

She goes away to school when she is fourteen. It is a mixed-race school, humans and Psy and changelings, in Moscow, one of a few known for their equality in curriculum and in socialization. None of her friends from the packs attend, of course, and she misses them like limbs. Regan, Caitlin and others from DarkRiver go to a branch of the same school in San Francisco, and sometimes they will all study together, when the classwork lines up. 

Naya Hunter is in her first year of college by the time Elena starts, but she comes by and meets Elena for ice cream sometimes, after these study sessions at the den or in the Moscow house. Her younger brother, Alex, is a year older than Elena, and they end up in the same advanced literature classes with Regan, despite the difference in locations. Those are her favorite days, when Papa or Vasic will bring her friends to the Moscow house; they study by the koi pond, and sometimes Mama makes cookies. Papa always says that they should have meal supplements with more nutritional value, but Elena likes when Mama bakes. Secretly, she thinks Papa does too. 

Other than these small study afternoons, Elena is alone in the Moscow school. Most of the students are nice enough, kind enough. For all she is an empath, she does not make friends easily; she knows as well as anyone that protecting one’s self is the most important thing to do. So she keeps to herself, is polite and gracious to others. She is an extension of her parents and their reputation, she knows this early. 

That reputation reflects onto her as well. 

In a chillier than normal January, Elena sits on the steps of the band hallway, waiting for her father to pick her up. He will be bringing Caitlin and Regan over to study for their advanced literature midterm, and she will be glad to see them. She has _Emma_ in her hands, and _Sense and Sensibility_ in her backpack. All kinds of literature soaks into her pores and stimulates her; she reads voraciously, sometimes through the lunch period. She likes books; they are reliable friends. Psy literature pre-Silence was mostly eliminated, but there is new work springing forth, and human and changeling literature has been around for centuries. There is nothing Elena likes more 

“Shouldn’t you be in class, princess?”

Elena looks up from her seat on the steps, blinking. Three juniors from the advanced literature class stare her down, two boys with blond hair and freckles who never talk in class, and a girl – a changeling from the BlackEdge pack, if she remembers right – who talks too much. Elena corrected her on a passage from their assigned reading earlier today, politely. Her blue eyes narrow on Elena, and Elena imagines she did not take it well. 

She says _princess_ as if it is a curse. 

“It’s free period,” Elena says quietly, going back to her book. “I can be here.”

“Daddy takes care of everything for you, doesn’t he?” the girl sneers. Behind her, the boys chuckle, harsh sounds. 

Elena has heard whispers for the first year and a half here at the public school. She tugs on the hem of her uniform skirt and doesn’t reply. Her parents may be Kaleb and Sahara Krychek, but she doesn’t get special treatment. She works for all her grades, and she isn’t good at everything. Math is a difficult trial, and she has no head for dates in history. She never complains to anyone about schoolwork, except for Caitlin and Regan. Her parents get her grades and come for the parent-teacher conferences, but Elena is quiet on the social structures of school. This is one of the reasons why.

“There is plenty of room to step around me,” she says in the polite voice she learned from Mama, after listening to her in Coalition meetings. 

“Too good to get up for us?” one of the boys says, voice full of childish venom. 

Elena shuts her eyes and inhales, reaches out with her psychic fingers. Jealousy, unhappiness, rage – they fill her senses, radiating from the three older teens. She could take – just take a little bit – 

“Aren’t you going to cry, Empath?” the girl asks sharply, cutting through Elena’s shields and thoughts. “Or can daddy tell?”

“Daddy will come in and save you,” the boy on the left mutters. 

“By forcing us with threats,” the other rejoins. 

Suddenly it presses on her, the realization of just how helpless she could be. She cannot hurt them; it would reflect back onto her. She cannot taunt them, for they will know how they have affected her. 

Elena swallows and sets her book aside. “Don’t speak of my father that way,” she says, voice cool. It is a voice she learned from Sascha. It means she is angry. 

“Did he program you to defend him?” the girl sneers, all blue eyes smudged with hurt. 

Anger colors her shields, raises the hair on the nape of Elena’s neck. Distantly, she hears a door open and shut, heels clacking on the tile floors. 

“You’re not even his _blood_ , so what use would he have for you?”

“He murdered people, didn’t he? We heard all about it – “

The anger pulses within Elena, threatens to overwhelm her. The negative energy in the hallway swells, balloons through her until she cannot think clearly, until she feels the gentle telepathic knock of both her mother and father, but all she wants to do is lay hands on her fellow students and make them feel the emotional pain she does – 

“What the hell are you doing?” Caitlin roars as she rounds the corner. Golden-red hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail, her dark eyes flicker, rolling into the dark amber of her cat. Even in her school uniform, she looks and moves like a DarkRiver soldier, like the sentinel she someday may become. Elena knows her father is close, if Caitlin is here; she feels his hovering presence like a dark bird or a storm cloud, just around the corner of the hallway. 

He will not come and fight her battles for her. 

The three teens shudder, and quail. Elena feels her hands tremble at her sides. Anger and jealousy and pain leave an acrid taste in her mouth, nausea rolling in her gut. 

“Just because she’s smarter than you three dumbasses doesn’t mean you get to be jackasses,” Caitlin snarls, the cat in every inch of her voice. She is her mother’s daughter, but the solid wall of her authority of her is all Riley. “Get out of here!”

The teens hurry away down the hallway and around the corner. In the grey winter afternoon light, Caitlin looks at Elena. “Want me to claw them?”

Elena shakes her head. “No,” she murmurs, rubbing her knuckles over her sternum. The negative energy remains a hard knot in her chest. She inhales and opens her psychic eye, diffusing it away from her inner shields and through her empathic shell. Just as Sascha taught her. 

“Fuck them,” Caitlin says with ease, reaching out to grab Elena’s hand in both of hers. “They don’t know anything about anything.”

Blinking, Elena holds onto her friend’s hand tightly, as if it is a lifeline. The steady rise and fall of Caitlin’s emotions balances Elena, until the hot knot of hatred in her chest has faded away. 

“They said my dad killed people,” she says after a moment. “That he programmed –“

“Bullshit,” Caitlin says. She is incredibly profane in her language when not around her father. Riley is something of an old-fashioned father. Elena knows Caitlin loves him, but she doesn’t take well to suppression. “It was war. My dad killed people. My mom killed people. People die in wars.”

Elena swallows down the lump in her throat. “I know.”

“You’re a powerful Empath, Elena,” Caitlin continues, squeezing her hand. “Do you feel programmed? Does your mom?”

“No,” Elena says, and it’s the truth. 

Shrugging, Caitlin lets out a huff. “Well, there you go. People suck sometimes. Write it off to that.”

“Okay,” Elena says, smiling slightly. 

Caitlin grins back. “C’mon,” she says, tugging on her hand. “Regan’s waiting in the courtyard with your dad. He’s looking real hot today. I think he cut his hair.”

“Eager,” Elena teases with a small smile, grabbing her bag and following her best friend down the hall. 

“Shut up,” Caitlin says with a grin. “I’m working a long game on him.”

Elena has never been on a date, never kissed a boy. She doesn’t think she’s had the urge to do so with anyone in her classes at school. Indeed, she isn’t sure what she would do if she did so. She and Caitlin and Selina read and laugh over magazines, over romance novels they secret from the libraries and the internet. But Elena doesn’t know what it feels like. 

Not yet. 

*

“You don’t ask people to treat me differently at school, do you?” Elena asks her father after he has taken both Regan and Caitlin home to their respective territories. In the same way he will always teleport her to and from school, every day, he is always there to bring her friends back and forth. He seems to understand how necessary they are to her mental state – at least that’s what he tells her. When he comes to pick her up at school every day, it is their time, the same as when he would give her baths before bed and they would play with her rubber duckies. 

The front hall of the house is quiet. Judd II, the second dog they’ve had with that moniker, sleeps outside Papa’s shut office door, a pile of white and brown fur. The first Judd died last year; they buried him in the lawn, where he liked to play in the high grasses. All of her friends – including all the Kincaid kids – came. 

Right now, Mama is with Sascha and Ivy, a meeting of the Empath section of the Coalition. It is Elena’s job to make dinner tonight. She will try to keep it tame for her father, but she does like to add peppers and sage into dishes of pasta and cheese and chicken, to make things interesting for his overly bland tastebuds. 

Kaleb fixes his dark cardinal gaze on her, face motionless. “Of course not.”

She toys with the straps of her bookbag, moving down the hall towards the stairs to her room. “Okay,” she murmurs. 

“Elena.”

She halts, trying again to suppress the tears at the backs of her eyes. “I have homework,” she says quietly, her shields airtight, even to her parents. 

Kaleb says nothing. She hurries upstairs and tosses her bookbag in her room, takes a moment to inhale, to breathe. Sascha, in one of her many training sessions, taught her how to center herself, how to build an internal space that is just for herself. It is what an empath must always return to, no matter the emotional maelstrom surrounding them. Elena stretches out on her bed, surrounded by the colors of the ocean she loves so well, and sifts through the day’s wear and tear to find herself. 

When she opens her eyes once more, thirty minutes have passed. She is centered and steady once more, the earlier incursions from the students at school just a memory ache. She can feel her father in the house, his shielding the usual perfect. Only once or twice has she felt distress from him; he keeps an iron clad control over so much of himself. 

She has never asked about it. There are some secrets she knows her parents would rather not share. 

Downstairs, she moves into the kitchen and begins to prepare dinner, slicing peppers and onions, fixing the nutrient water her father prefers above all else. There is chicken breast baking in the thermal unit and pasta water boiling when she senses her father’s approach. Elena looks out the windows over the sink, watches the sun disappear over the horizon. 

“You appeared upset when we picked you up from school,” Kaleb says from behind her. 

“It’s okay,” she says automatically. “I’m fine.”

When she turns from the thermal stove unit to the island, to continue prepping the salad, he is sitting on the other side, watching her carefully. Her father has the most pristine Silent face she has ever seen. Even in a world without Silence, he is still the ultimate politician. 

Now, though, she feels tendrils of his concern, reaching out psychically. “Why did you ask me about special requests at your school, then?”

She bites the inside of her bottom lip and says nothing. Her cheeks flush with heat. 

“Elena, do the other students say things to you?” he asks quietly. “About me?”

The lump from before returns, settling hard in her throat. “Papa – “

Halting, she stares down into the bowl between her palms, full of fresh lettuce and tomatoes and mushrooms. It is January, and yet her father can get anything he wants from anywhere. She has always known her father was a powerful man; just how powerful, is finally starting to dawn on her. 

Suddenly, before she can stop herself, she is crying. Quiet tears, her breath hitching as she drops her hands from the salad bowl and wraps her arms around herself. Just as suddenly, Kaleb is there, putting his arms around her and holding her close to his chest. She buries her face in the cool fabric of his shirt and lets him hold her. She wants the solidity of her father’s strength around her. 

“You are a bright, powerful girl,” he says gently, holding him firmly even as her breathing hiccups and she wets his shirt with her tears. “I would never obstruct your growth in any way.”

She hugs him tightly around the waist, wishing she was a baby again, wishing it was just her and Papa and Mama, on the beach, on the terrace, visiting Uncle Judd in the SnowDancer woods. Everything was simpler then, and she misses it. 

“But if someone is harming you, I cannot allow that to happen.”

“Papa, no,” she says, shaking her head against his chest. “It’s just – it’s just kid stuff.”

A gentle hand strokes over the heavy curls of her dark hair. “My childhood was quite different ,” he says after a moment, his voice restrained. There is an old ache, an old grief that she can sense. She longs to ease it, but she promised long ago to never practice her abilities on Papa. He was so entirely serious that she would never dream of breaking her word. “I do not understand what that means.”

For a moment, she thinks of telling him – of telling him what it is to be the daughter of the most powerful man in the Net. The man who controls it, who operates by rules given by her mother, for the most part. Ruling Coalition aside, if her father decided to end everything, he could do it. That is how people see her, she thinks. As a cold monster’s pet. 

“Kids tease,” she says instead, raising her hands to her face to wipe her cheeks clean. “Kids tease, and it’s normal. I think my empathy makes it harder to process, that’s all.”

A lie. Not all kids tease like this. This was cruelty. But Elena looks up at her father and knows she cannot tell him, not when he already protects her so avidly from himself. There are hurts she does not know and she cannot fix; but this, she can take for herself. 

He kisses her brow, seemingly mollified. “I trust you,” he says quietly. “You need only say the word, and I will make an appointment with your teachers.”

“It’s okay,” she says, letting her reassurance fill her outmost shields. “Thank you, Papa.”

A killer he may have been, she thinks as he takes his seat back at the island and asks after her math class, but no one’s hands are ever fully clean. He is still her father. 

Later, Elena corners her mother by the koi pond, alone. 

“Mama.”

Sahara looks up from her data pad, blue eyes warm and wide. She pats the empty cushion next to her on the sofa. “Hi, baby.”

She sits and immediately curls up to Sahara’s side, her mother’s slim toned arm wrapping around her shoulders. 

Sahara kisses the top of her head, rocking her slightly. “Your papa said you may have had a bad day at school,” she says softly. 

Eyes burning, Elena blinks hard. Her father is in his office, rooms away. “It’s okay,” she says quietly. 

“It doesn’t have to be,” Sahara says, voice warm and knowing. “We’re family.”

“I miss my friends from Pack,” Elena blurts out. “I just – the kids at school – “

She pauses, looking down at the fabric of the sofa, a blue like Mama’s eyes. Mama told her once that Papa designed this entire house for her, down to every piece of furniture and every window view. That is the level of devotion her parents have for one another. The tattoo on his forearm, the political meetings her mother takes – a monster wouldn’t love like this. Would he?

“The kids at school say Papa is dangerous,” she says at last, voice cracking. “They said he killed people, and that he forced you – “

She cuts herself off and presses her face into Sahara’s shoulder. The fury emanating off of her mother is intense; it filters through Elena’s empathetic shields and into her core shields, until she has to take a deep breath and separate it psychically from her own emotions. Sahara’s arm tightens around her, hard. 

“I didn’t want to tell him,” Elena says, voice very small. The familiar scent and warmth of the house, of her mother is a comfort. “I know – I know there are things I can’t know. And when I’m with Caitlin or Regan or Alex or Selina, it doesn’t matter. Because they get it. But the kids at school, some of them – “

“I know, baby,” Sahara murmurs, her anger like ice in the air. “People don’t want to see past the facades.”

For a moment, they are quiet. Elena can sense her father’s interest, his movement. She wonders what Sahara telegraphed through the bond to him. Their bond is a peculiar thing between Psys. She wonders if she will ever care for someone so intensely. 

“He already has to do so much,” she says at last. “And it really isn’t so bad. I just – I got overwhelmed.”

“Never apologize for your feelings,” Sahara says fiercely, hugging Elena tightly to her side. “Your feelings are wonderful and make you what you are. Your papa understands that.” 

Inhaling deeply, Elena sits up and away from Sahara. “I don’t mean to act like a baby,” she murmurs, looking down at her clasped hands. She looks so very different from her parents – a reminder of how truly _chosen_ she was, in the strangest of senses. 

“You’re _not_ ,” Sahara says fiercely. “I wish I could tell you that this will be the last time, but I can’t.”

“I know.” Her parents are always honest with her. Transparency in everything; in her punishments, when she misbehaved; in their love, unwavering. “Just – please don’t tell Papa.”

Sahara’s mouth thins, the soft caramel of her skin flushed with heat, with anger. “Elena, he won’t be upset with you.”

Shrugging, Elena tucks into herself. “I know. But it – it would hurt him,” she says slowly. “I just know it would.” Just as she knew when she was merely a child that the rainbows inside their mind helped stabilize him, she knows that this knowledge would turn some dark key. 

The lines of her mother’s face soften. Sahara leans over and kisses Elena’s cheek, smoothing her curls back behind her ears. “Okay,” she says quietly. “Our secret.”

Elena smiles slightly, her trust in her parents absolute. 

When she goes to school the next day, she keeps her head held high, and speaks in class with the same verve and excitement as usual. The other students look at her; she doesn’t say a word. 

*

“I heard kids were giving you shit,” Declan says when he sees her next. 

She is on a short visit to San Francisco, to watch Caitlin and Liam graduate from high school. Spring is in full bloom around them, the trees flowering in the courtyard of the school. She and Declan walk a little behind their parents, for privacy. Carlos walks up ahead with Judd and Brenna. It is a pack affair, with Lucas and Sascha and Naya and Alex coming down as well. 

Elena can’t help but be glad to see them all, these people she considers family. 

“Who said that?” she asks, tipping her head back to look at Declan. Eighteen now, and increasingly muscular; he’s grown into his build, looks a carbon copy of his father. But there is more amusement in his eyes, more spontaneity. There is something of his mother in him yet. 

“Cait,” he says, reaching out to rub his hand between her shoulder blades. His skin is hot through her sundress. 

As usual, she feels her shields relaxing around him, as if there is a bone-deep urge to meld her emotions to his. She smiles up at him and shrugs. “It was fine, really.”

“I have no problems making some people disappear for you,” he says, and she thinks he’s not joking. Sometimes, with his serious tone, she can’t tell. 

“I don’t need you to protect me,” she murmurs. He defended her enough when they were younger, and when her father was still a stranger to the den. Caitlin has told her of multiple times when Declan hauled off and punched a friend in the face for speaking ill of her. She does not want to be a bringer of negativity to any of those she calls friends and family. 

He shrugs and slings his arm around her shoulders. The skin to skin contact shivers through her. His eyes gleam in the spring sunlight. “I know you don’t. Maybe I just want to.”

When she glances ahead, she sees her father looking at them, his face unreadable. A flush rises on her throat, but she does not shift away from Declan’s hold. “The school year is over. Hopefully the fall will be better,” she says firmly. “I appreciate the offer, though.”

Declan peers at her, his mouth unmoving. “It’s always on the table. I’m always around for you, Elena.”

They sit together during the graduation, his arm stretched across the back of her chair. Elena twines her fingers in her lap, her skin coffee-dark against the pale yellow eyelet skirt, and tries to control the urge to melt into him. She does not know fully what it means – but she wants to kiss him, very much. 

It is then that she begins her clandestine research on sexual intercourse, and courtship. 

(Like father like daughter, her mother says years later. Elena groans, because there are some things a daughter never needs to know.)

*

On a visit to the university in San Francisco, Elena’s number one choice for college, Uncle Judd and Aunt Brenna join Elena and her parents for lunch. 

“You’re getting quite the reputation in the den,” Brenna says with a warm smile, her straw-yellow hair pulled back into a gleaming sleek ponytail. Brenna is always a comfort to Elena’s empathetic senses, a bright resilient figure with a will of steel and the understanding enough to love a former Arrow. Brenna reminds her of Sahara; she wonders if that she why she loves spending time with them the most. 

“Really?” Elena asks, playing with the ends of her curls over her shoulder. It’s a nervous habit. 

Brenna leans closer to her, those dark eyes shot with blue twinkling. “Ice Princess.”

Elena wrinkles her nose, a facial tic she has yet to suppress. Since realizing just how vulnerable her empathy makes her, she has made a concerted effort to shield herself more effectively, and take in the emotions of others only when necessary. This has had the side effect of restraining her own emotional responses, and now those who do not know her see her as a cool person. They say perhaps she is not an empath after all. 

“Don’t say it around Declan though. He swings at people,” Brenna adds casually. 

Elena’s heart skips in her chest. She sees Declan so rarely; he is a novice soldier now, almost twenty-one years old, and was sent to the San Diego sector for additional training after Christmas. Now it is spring, and she is about to graduate from high school, and she has no idea whether he will be there for her party. 

(She is absolutely having a party. Sahara insists on it, and Kaleb merely stands there and sighs once or twice when Elena and Sahara sit at the kitchen island and plan it.)

“He shouldn’t get into fights on my account,” Elena says at last. 

“Well, if it isn’t Declan, it’s Selina. You’ve got two tough cookies on your side, sweetheart,” Brenna says with a laugh. 

Elena’s glance flickers between Judd and Brenna. Judd sits across from Kaleb, the two men deep in discussion. They were something like superheroes to her young mind; Kaleb would regale her with tales of the Ghost and his partner Judd, from what seems like ages ago, when she was young. Now, though she knows the tales were sanitized – there are some truths not even parents can hide from curious teenagers – she is sure the friendship remains, strong and resolute. Just as she knows Brenna and Sahara are bound by forces deeper than mere acquaintance. 

She thinks of sleepovers at the den, Judd and Brenna watching her when her parents went on vacations or business trips. She thinks of the care and affection they had with her, and how they are without children of their own. The ache is a mellow one, but it lingers in the shadows of Brenna’s bright gaze. 

“I have you and Uncle Judd. That’s all I need,” Elena says at last, smiling to hide the trembling of her bottom lip. Her shields shift and she reaches out to Brenna psychically, touching that mellowed bruise and trying to ease it. 

Brenna inhales softly. Her smile softens. “Honey, it’s all right,” she says quietly. 

Elena blinks hard. “I miss when I was little, and we would watch the dress shows,” she says abruptly. 

Laughing, Brenna reaches out to touch her cheek, a changeling urge. “It was fun, wasn’t it?”

“I tried to get Kaleb to watch it, once,” Sahara chimes in, voice warm like sunshine. Her love wraps around Elena like a cocoon. “He did not approve.”

“To be a fly on that wall,” Brenna says impudently, grinning at her mate over the water glasses. The restaurant is quiet and cool, windows open to the Golden Gate Bridge in the foreground. 

Sitting back in her chair as Brenna and Sahara begin to chat, Elena sips her water and glances around, smiling. She feels right here, in this city. She longs to try to be something new, and she thinks she can do it here. The university is of good standing, and has a fantastic cross-racial and cross-cultural literatures program. She wants to sink into her studies, focus on what she is _good_ at; she will never play politics, not as her parents do. But books are long-term friends; she can rely on them. 

“You look happy,” Uncle Judd says as the five of them walk out of the restaurant. Sahara and Brenna chat at the sidewalk as Kaleb stands with Sahara, his hand on the small of her back. 

Elena smiles up at Judd, her godfather. She remembers riding on his shoulders when she was six, remembers climbing over him with Declan and Selina in the den nursery. He should have been a father, she thinks sadly. But she will take his attentions in lieu of a daughter of his own. “I like it here.”

He hugs her, kisses her temple. “You’ll be close enough that we can check in on you. Take you out for dinner,” he says with a smile. 

She scowls slightly. “I don’t need a babysitter. Papa’s going to be bad enough.” Sahara had already warned her of her father’s requirements for an apartment and security systems, and perhaps Elena could just commute to university, like she commutes now?

Judd smiles, dark hair falling across his brow. There are just hints of silver at his temples now. “He loves you.”

Smiling again, she gives Judd one last hug. “I know.”

“We love you, too,” he says, voice odd. His devotion and affection for not just her but her whole family is apparent; she embraces it and holds on, sends it through her bond with her parents. It is a sign that they have done some things right. 

“You’ll come to the party, then?” she asks, blinking up at him. 

Nodding, Judd walks her over to Brenna and her parents. “Of course. All the Laurens, Kincaids, and Snows will be there.”

“As will the Hunters, Kyriakuses, and Aden and Rina and Vasic and Ivy,” Sahara chimes in. 

“It may as well be a Pack Circle gathering,” Kaleb says evenly. 

Brenna laughs. “Hey, you’ve been to those. You know how fun they are.”

“Do I,” he says, pinning her with dark cardinal eyes. 

Shaking her head, Brenna just leans into Judd and smirks. “Hope you’re planning the party around those geological anomalies so prevalent in your area,” she teases. 

Elena blushes as Kaleb stares at Brenna and Sahara laughs. Eighteen still feels too young to have to know so much about her parents’ private life. 

“We will try to forecast those appropriately,” Kaleb says stonily, and Sahara and Brenna burst into laughs. 

Sighing, Elena tips her head back to the spring blue cool skies, and inhales. Soon, this will be home. 

*

“There you are.”

Elena glances at her open bedroom door, her skin heating. “Oh.”

Declan hovers, his hands behind his back. He all but fills the doorway, broad shouldered and dark-haired. He still keeps it cut very close to his skull, unlike his father and brothers. At twenty-one, he’s grown into his form, packed on the muscle needed for a prospective senior soldier. But his eyes remain intent and gentle, as she remembers them from when she was five. 

She had a sudden memory of his arms under her knees, of their running through the woods in utter freedom. 

“Hey,” he says, skin deeply tan against the dark blue button-down, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. There is a tattoo on his forearm, the imprint of wolf claws done in black outline. All the Kincaid kids got them – Caitlin included – with a cat’s paw outline on the other forearm, when they turned eighteen. A tribute to both their parents and their shared packs. 

“Hi,” she says, leaning against her vanity. The room is a mess of clothes and shoes that her father will insist on her picking up as soon as the party is over. Picking a graduation outfit had been harder than she had thought, what with Selina and Caitlin and Sahara assisting and giving their sometimes-opposing opinions. The white and blue polka-dot dress was her decision, ultimately; she liked the pockets. 

Sounds of the party from the terrace and downstairs filter up to them, as they stand feet apart in her childhood room. She hasn’t seen him in six months, not since his posting in San Diego. The last time they were all together, during a visit to DarkRiver’s Pack Circle during Christmastime, Caitlin sniffed at him and teased him about a woman’s scent on his skin. 

Elena wonders, an ache in her belly, whether it is still there. Whether he has mated. Carlos already has, with a human woman he met in university. Their generation is mating young, it seems. Ben and Marlee mated when he was twenty-two and she was twenty-six. He will make a good mate to a lucky person. 

Declan steps inside, smiling that small familiar grin that she thinks is just for her. He is not a demonstrative man. He never has been. But with her, he smiles. “Happy graduation.”

“Thanks,” she says softly. What is the matter with her? Her shields always want to open up to their fullest around him, no matter whether she is five, ten, fifteen, or eighteen. “I’m glad you could come. I hope it’s not taking you away from your duties.”

He tilts his head, hands still behind his back. “No way. And the alpha’s downstairs, so I think I’ve got a good alibi,” he says with a wry twist. “Besides, wouldn’t miss this.”

“Oh,” she says, pulse fluttering in her neck. She very much wishes she had left her hair down. Pinned up, she feels utterly exposed, her neck and shoulders bare from the neckline of her dress. “Well – “

“I’ve missed you,” he blurts out. She can’t escape the sincerity. 

“You don’t have to be nice,” she says instead, her belly aching with the need to touch him. What the _hell_ is going on? “I’m just your sister’s friend – “

“Hey. You’re my friend, too,” he says, voice suddenly deadly quiet. She can read the soldier behind his tone. “And I haven’t been there for you.”

“You had training. You moved. I was here – it’s – it’s okay,” she mumbles, cheeks flushed hot. They have exchanged emails, even with distance and time. She knows of his life, his training; she has told him of her plans for university, of moving to the city. They have not been so apart as it would seem. 

But seeing him in the flesh forces the realization of just how much she has missed him. 

_Elena? Are you well?_

Her father’s warm telepathic query brings her out of her reverie. She picks up the earrings she came up here for, hurriedly slipping them into her ears. “We should get back – “

“Wait,” he says, taking her hand with familiarity. The touch of his skin to hers is a punch to her gut, hooks her deep in her chest. She inhales silently, taking in the woodsmoke and clean snow scent of him. 

“I wanted to give you this,” he continues, bringing his other hand out from behind his back. He hands her a small box, with a card on top. 

“Your mom brought a gift already,” she says dumbly, tilting her head back to look at him. Even in her wedge sandals, he is so much taller than her. She only comes up to his shoulder. 

Blinking, he swallows hard, the wolf coming into his gaze. She has never seen his wolf, she thinks. She has seen his siblings’ animals, but never his. He keeps himself close to the chest, Declan. She always thought it a blessing when he would smile at her, climb with her, play with her, talk to her. 

“This is just from me,” he says quietly, keeping her gaze. 

Pleasure and nerves slip over her like a loose long wave. Her empathic shields shuddering, she shifts closer to him. “Should I – “

“If you want,” he murmurs, bowing his head close to hers. 

The closeness of him makes her pulse throb, her palms sweat. She wets her lips and works at the wrapping paper with ease. The sun seeps through the gauzy curtains at the window, playing along the lines of the hardwood floor. She opens the box and finds a bracelet of translucent glass beads and silver links, flecks of color caught in the glass. When she lifts it up to the light, they look like rainbows. 

“Declan, this is – “ she blushes, raising her eyes to his once more. “This is lovely.”

“It reminded me of you, the second I saw it. An artisan on the beach in San Diego makes them,” he says, voice awfully low.

“Thank you,” she breathes. 

For a moment, they stand there by the edge of her bed, mere inches apart. Their breaths mingle in the air. His fingers take the bracelet and hook it around her wrist; he does not break eye contact once. Something is happening in this moment, she thinks desperately as she shifts closer, as his hand slides up the sensitive coffee-hued skin of her forearm and shoulder – 

“Elena! Oh – “

Declan’s hand drops from her shoulder. Elena blinks and takes a step back, her gaze flickering to Selina Lauren Snow’s pale blue eyes from the doorway of her bedroom. Selina, her ruby-dark hair pulled back in a long ponytail, blinks twice before a smirk erupts over her freckled face. 

“Whoops,” she says, not sounding sorry at all. “Your mom sent me up. Something about cake.”

“Right,” Elena says quietly. “Thank you, Declan.”

He doesn’t move for a long moment. Then, he touches her cheek with his knuckles, gives her a small smile, and heads out of her room. The glare he gives Selina, the alpha’s daughter, is one that makes the girl laugh. 

“Keeping secrets?” Selina teases, bright eyes flashing. The wolf is there, utterly curious. “We saw how well that went for Caitlin and Regan.”

“Well, they’re just about mated, so it seems to have been fine,” Elena murmurs, her face hot. 

“What was that?”

Elena shrugs. “We were catching up.”

“With your mouths?” Selina asks dryly. 

“Lina, come on,” Elena mutters. She places the box and the unopened card on top of her bed, and hurries out of the room, with Selina on her heels. 

She doesn’t see Declan again for three years. 

(She wears his bracelet every day.)

*

_Dear Elena,_

_Congratulations on graduating high school. I know you’re really excited about university, and I’m sure you’re going to knock them dead. You’ve always been ten steps ahead of me, in any case. I hope you’ll continue to email me while you’re in school. Hearing from you is the best part of my week._

_You’re great, Elena. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise._

_If you need anything, you have my comm code. Don’t hesitate to use it._

_-D_

*

Emails will demonstrate personal change over time, but there is no substitute for the in-person reception.

Elena, a creature of emotion and feeling, knows this more than most. Her parents’ telepathic hails and emails and comm conversations are wonderful, but their embraces when she returns home for holidays and short weekend trips mean the world to her. She doesn’t fully realize how truly this notion rings until she is twenty-one years old, running from the front door of her one-bedroom apartment to the bus stop, and she runs head first into Declan Kincaid. 

Her heavy winter coat softens the blow, but she reels back, her tote bag swinging wildly from her arm. “I’m so – “ and she stops, pushing her hair from her face, because Declan stares down at her as if she has appeared from thin air, those dark expressive eyes wide. 

Immediately, the familiar grip of pleasure and anticipation swallows her, stealing her words. Usually so collected and calm, she steps back and gapes. 

“You – you’re here!” she exclaims, a smile threatening her entire face. 

His cheeks crease, teeth white against his olive skin. His hair is longer now, curling over his brow and the nape of his neck, his dark grey peacoat buttoned over his broad chest. He looks – he looks just as she remembers, from her graduation party three and a half years ago. He looks _better_. Emails and Caitlin’s whining about the leopard females mooning over him while on shift with her don’t do him justice. 

“Surprise,” he says, taking her by the elbows and steering her out of the way of oncoming foot traffic. 

Swallowing, she struggles not to let her shields and filters fall. She wants to drop everything and let him in with every breath, wants to breathe in the woodsmoke and snow-scent of his skin. Deep inside of her, something clicks and begins to whirr, a part of her that has lain dormant until now. 

“You said you were being relocated to the den,” she says, still catching her breath. 

“I am. Dad has me on a city rotation for the first few months,” he says, voice low. There is a smile in his eyes that she can’t place. He is normally so restrained, so solid; this amount of pleasure emanating off of him throws her off balance. She doesn’t mind it. “I thought – god, Elena. It’s so good to see you.”

And just as suddenly, she is wrapped up in his embrace, a hug that she never wants to escape from. His scent surrounds her. She shuts her eyes, her tote bag sandwiched between their stomachs, and inhales deeply. There is an intrinsic comfort in his hold, in his company. She would be quite happy to stay here forever, under a grey January sky, with his arms iron-tight around her. He all but has her off of her feet. 

“Oh – “ she breathes, cursing under her breath. “Class! Oh shit!”

His cheek moves against hers. The slight scrape of stubble weakens her joints. “You have class?”

“Until four this afternoon. How long are you here?” she asks, shifting out of his embrace reluctantly. His bracelet, usually so cool against her wrist, feels like a brand under her sweater and coat. 

He reaches up to fix her scarf, tucking it closer around her throat. “Long enough. Dinner tonight? I’ll comm you.”

She grins, slightly breathless. He makes her feel so open, so free. It’s frightening and exhilarating. “Yes. Yes!”

She leaves him there on the sidewalk around the corner from her apartment, running to catch the next bus, and it is the hardest exit of her life. 

*

“You did not tell me your brother was here,” is the first thing Elena says when she visual-comms Caitlin a week later, in the dying sunset of a January Sunday night. 

Caitlin, looking rumpled and flustered, blinks. The visual is from the neck up, but Elena knows her best friend’s shoulders are bare, as is probably the rest of her. “You know, I was _busy_ \- “

A low rumble from the background, and Caitlin reaches back to hit what Elena can only assume must be Regan’s prone form. The sheets shift behind her. 

“Sorry,” Elena says, not sorry at all. 

Grimacing, Caitlin shoves red-gold hair from her freckled tan face. “Which brother?”

“Declan,” Elena says, cheeks heating. She lays back on the sofa, datapad resting on her stomach, and kicks her feet out in front of her on the coffee table. If she was in the Moscow house, with her parents, her father would stare at her until she put her feet down. That kind of posture just wasn’t allowed. But this is her space, decorated the way she likes it, in warm sand and cool blue ocean tones, and she can do as she pleases. 

Immediately, Caitlin shifts her gaze away from Elena’s. “How was I supposed to know? He’s not my Pack,” she says casually. Elena can hear a low laugh from the background, and scowls. 

“Cait, I swear – “

“He may have mentioned a city rotation. So what? I didn’t think he was going to chase you down the first day he got there,” Caitlin exclaims. 

Blinking, Elena rubs her hand over her eyes. “I guess he did,” she murmurs. 

“What have you been doing?” Caitlin asks, as a sweatshirt comes flying into the frame and hits her in the bare shoulder. “This is unnecessary,” she says off-screen. 

Elena tries and fails to suppress a giggle. “Coffee. Dinner twice. We walked along the bay and I nearly froze my hands off. He came and sat in on my history lecture.”

“Is he doing any actual work?” Caitlin drawls as her head pops through the neck of the sweatshirt. 

“Of course he is,” Elena says, flushing. “We’re just – it’s nice to see him in person again.”

“All those long-suffering emails, yeah. You guys are a regular hot mess,” Caitlin mutters. She turns her head to glare at Regan, who remains out of visual. “Please stay still, Elena doesn’t need a free show. She’ll be getting one soon enough.”

“Wait, what?” Elena asks, blinking. 

Caitlin peers at Elena, her eyes flickering to the cat in her curiosity. “You can’t actually think he’s just there to say hi,” she says flatly. 

“I don’t know why he’s here, other than he has rotations down here,” Elena says stubbornly. It has taken a lot of effort, but she had effectively managed to keep her empathic shields up, in an effort not to read his emotional signatures while they are together. They have spent most of the time together talking – about his work as a soldier, about her classwork and her upcoming thesis due by the end of April, about next steps, about dumb memories from childhood. He is the same solid, strong, quiet Declan she remembers, with that special smile all for her – but now he is an adult, a man. He is responsible for so many, and takes it all on with ease. She admires him even more for it. 

It makes her wonder what he could see in a woman like herself, even as just a friend. 

“Jesus Christ,” Caitlin mutters. A lean golden-cream hand sticks its way into the frame, waving. 

Elena smiles. “Hi, Regan.”

Caitlin bats her mate’s hand away before she fixes her gaze back on Elena. “He’s not spending time with anyone else. He’s – I think he’s courting you.”

Swallowing with difficulty, Elena runs a nervous hand through her hair. Part of her is all hope – the other part is all nerves. “That – I don’t know about that.”

“Well – use your extremely fertile talents as a feeler of things and get on that,” Caitlin says, waggling her eyebrows. 

“You are very unhelpful today,” Elena says primly. 

“You interrupted me in the middle of wild monkey sex with my mate. You should be glad I answered at all,” Caitlin retorts. 

Elena sighs. Her nerves are shot, her pulse fluttering. The thought of Declan _courting_ her – she is enthralled and frightened, all at once. “Go back to it, then.”

Caitlin wiggles her eyebrows. “Go with it, girl. You two have been basically courting long-distance, anyway. Do it in person. And then _do_ it,” she laughs. 

“Go back to your monkey sex,” Elena squeaks, signing off as Caitlin laughs into the scream. The sudden quiet in the apartment is startling. Declan has never been here. They’ve only ever met out – for coffee, for dinner. She has never felt more comfortable with someone not Caitlin or her parents, and it’s a strange but warming sensation. 

She wants to bring him here. 

*

With rain falling around them in heavy wet drops, Elena kisses Declan for the first time. 

“What is with you and wanting to go outside?” she asks, digging her hands into her coat pockets with a scowl. He holds the umbrella over them, shielding her from the worst of it. 

He grins a little, and she can feel the laugh in the air between them. Today, a Saturday in which she has nothing to do – an amazing feat, considering her coursework and thesis research – they’ve had lunch and are now walking through the busy streets of Chinatown, peering into shop windows. His hand is on the small of her back, an intimate possessive touch. She’s seen him three times this week, between classes and his shifts working with the DarkRiver soldiers, and she still has no idea what exactly they’re _doing_. 

“You don’t like rain?” he asks, voice low. 

“I like rain well enough,” she says. “But I prefer snow. That’s what I miss about home. When it would snow at home, Mama would make snow angels with me.”

“Not your dad?”

She smiles, the energy between them warm and settling. It soothes her; his entire presence soothes her. “He spent his time figuring out the exact structural proportions for the perfect snowman.”

“Sounds about right. I remember a Christmas at your house though. Your mom and mine decorated the terrace,” he says, guiding her with ease through the slick streets. “I think I was five.”

Flushing, she inches closer to his side. “I think I’m too young to remember that,” she says. 

“Yeah, you were little. Two, maybe? Your dad wouldn’t put you down,” he says warmly. 

“Sounds about right,” she murmurs. 

His hand shifts up and down her back, a warm caress she feels right through her coat. She lifts her gaze to his, feeling his dark gaze on her. Sometimes she thinks she can feel his wolf right under his skin. 

“I can’t believe he let you go so far away for college,” he says after a moment. 

“He’s a teleport away,” she sighs. “And for the first three months, both he and Mama came by at least twice a week.”

“What would he think about this?” he asks, stopping them in front of a quiet bookshop window. 

She frowns, her nose wrinkling. “Papa always liked you,” she says, and it’s true. Out of all of her friends, Declan occupied a special space in her father’s world. Perhaps it was the quiet, solid strength of him; perhaps it was how watchful he was of the younger children when they would all play together. But Kaleb always liked Declan. 

“Would he like me taking you out to dinner tonight?” he asks, gaze intent. 

Heat rushes to her cheeks as he leans in over her. It isn’t intimidation; she feels solidly surrounded and content within the cradle of his arms. “We’ve gone out to dinner three times in the last two weeks,” she says slowly. 

“Yeah, but – “ he takes a deep breath, exhaling slowly. “This would be a date.”

“A date?” she repeats, blinking up at him through the mist and the grey afternoon light. Water drips along his exposed neck, his jaw, as the breeze shifts the direction of the rain. 

“A date,” he says, the tops of his cheeks flushed. “A dinner date. Where I pay, and you dress up, and it’s a surprise – “

She rises up on her tiptoes and kisses his lips softly. Her hands slip from her pockets to curl around his jacket collar as she shuts her eyes and moves her lips across his. He is still for a brief moment, a moment that makes her want to curl up in rejection, until his hand flattens at the small of her back and he brings her in flush to his chest, his mouth opening over hers. Shields quivering, she drops all pretense and lets her empathic senses expand, lets him in as deep as she wants to. He is desire and want and affection and nerves, his focus on _her_. The sensations leave her drunk, swaying on jelly-like limbs. 

“Is that a yes?” he asks against her lips. 

“Yes,” she breathes, and feels something click into place inside of her, a beginning. 

*

The rain stops as Elena stands in front of her closet and fingers her collection of dresses, the winter evening light a cool blue as it slips through the curtains. When she had asked Declan about dress code for the evening, he’d flushed and muttered and was practically unintelligible, which was mostly adorable. 

Finally, she stands in front of her mirror in her bedroom, smoothing down the skirt of her favorite A-line dress, coral pink with silver stitching, and approves. Her glass bracelet stays on. She pulls her hair back, pinning the curls into a low bun, and tries to keep her hands from shaking as she slips on silver teardrop pearl earrings, a gift from her parents. She slips on freshly polished black ankle boots and her black peacoat, and straightens up and picks up her apartment as she waits. 

When her cell phone beeps with an incoming text message, she jumps. 

_u got ready 2 hours early and r pacing around, aren’t u_

Scowling, she calls Caitlin from her phone. “Please try to utilize proper grammar. You know that drives me nuts,” she says plaintively when Caitlin picks up the phone. 

“Who are you, my dad? Jesus,” Caitlin mutters. “What are you doing?”

“Cleaning.”

“Ooooh. Are you going to bring him back there?” Caitlin all but coos. 

Blushing, Elena throws her dirty clothes in her hamper and shoves the hamper into her closet. “Well, he is coming here to get me.”

“Ten bucks says you don’t make it back out.”

“Cait!”

The leopard changeling laughs, sounding entirely too delighted at the situation. “If he gets in the front door, he is not going to leave. You thought I was playing the long game on Regan? Girl, my brother has been pining for _years_.”

“Why the hell wouldn’t you tell me that years ago?” Elena says, startled into stillness in the middle of her bedroom. 

“This was more fun,” Caitlin says. 

“Thanks,” Elena says grumpily. “Thanks a lot.”

Caitlin sighs into the phone. “Elena, relax. This is Declan. You’ve been friends forever. You can’t honestly tell me you’ve never thought about this.”

Silent, Elena walks into the hallway and to the living room. Lived-in but clean; it will pass muster. She can’t help but wonder what Declan may think of her apartment, of the life she’s created here. 

“Elena?”

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Elena says, sighing. “He’ll be here soon.”

In fact, her buzzer rings as soon as she ends the call. Her father insisted on a doorman-building, and she already put Declan on the list to be allowed up earlier this afternoon. When she buzzes him up, she rocks on her booted heels, her coat unbuttoned, waiting near the door. She thinks she can feel him in the hallway, hovering outside her door. 

When he knocks, she jumps. Her pulse beats hard in her throat. She opens the door and he is there, in jeans and a sleek white button-down, his coat open to the chest. His dark eyes settle on her, drift over her body. He leans against the doorframe, lips twitching into a slow smile. 

“Wow,” he says, and she feels her cheeks heat. 

“Stop it,” she murmurs, shifting away from the door. “Want to come in?”

He blinks and suddenly she can see the wolf there, amber-dark and watching her, prowling there. Animal desire shimmers in the air between them. Her empathic shields quiver; she wants to lower them, to absorb all of him inside of her and keep him there always. Her toes curl in her boots. 

“How long have you been in this place?” he asks as he steps inside and shuts the door behind him. 

She looks over her shoulder, wetting her lips. He fills the living room, all broad shoulders and dark features. She likes the look of him here, in her space. Suddenly, she thinks of bringing him to her childhood bedroom, crawling into her twin bed with him pressed up against her. Her heart kicks hard against her ribs. 

“Three years,” she says. “Mama and Papa were worried that dormitories would overload my empathic shields.”

“I like it,” he says, walking over to her. His hands touch the lapels of her open peacoat, pushing it further open. “I like this, too.”

Swallowing, she tips her head back to look at him, her hands coming up to touch his wrists. “You look nice,” she murmurs.

His gaze darkens, sharpens on hers. “Just nice?” he asks, lips curling. 

She flushes. “Declan.”

In response, he leans down and kisses her. This is not the easy light kiss from the street this afternoon; this is hot, wet – she feels devoured and wants to devour, wants to sink into the sensation of it and hold on. She wraps her arms around his neck and presses herself flush to his chest as he cups her face in his hands and licks into her mouth, taking and giving and walking her back until she’s got her back to her living room wall, his forearms resting on either side of her head as he leans over her. 

She has dated people while in college, has engaged in sexual activity with humans and Psys. Never another changeling, and never long enough with anyone to constitute a serious relationship. This kiss, here, with Declan? This feels different than all of her previous experiences. She imprints the emotional tenor of his embrace, of his sheer wanting into her brain, to keep for dark sleepless nights when she is alone. 

“Still just nice?” he asks against her lips, eyes rolling to the wolf. 

She blinks up at him, her fingers stroking over the nape of his neck. He hovers over her, close enough that every muscle in her body softens in anticipation. “You know you’re handsome,” she says softly, wanting to crawl over his chest and wrap her legs around his waist. The sheer physicality of her reaction surprises her, but perhaps it shouldn’t. She’s always wanted to be completely open to him. 

He ducks his head and kisses her softly, his cheeks dusky with a blush. “I like when you say it,” he says, voice a low growl. 

Shivering, she nestles closer to him, failing to control the pleased smile blooming over her lips. “We should go, shouldn’t we?” she asks. 

Declan blinks, his gaze returning to the dark slant of the human again. His hands settle at her waist. “Yeah,” he breathes, leaning down to kiss her once again. His lips are warm and insistent against hers. “We should.”

“This is not leaving,” she teases, her pulse racing at her throat. 

“You’re letting me kiss you. I don’t want to move from this spot ever again,” he retorts warmly. 

Sighing, she pushes at his chest playfully, missing the warmth of him as he shifts away. “We could come back to this spot,” she says with a smile, tugging on her coat panels and searching out the buttons. “After.”

He grins then, that slow small smile that she thinks carries her name. “You drive a hard bargain, Elena Kyrchek.”

“You did promise me a real date,” she says, absurdly pleased at how he takes her hand in his as she grabs her purse. Her keys jingle in her free hand as they walk into the hall. 

He stands right behind her as she locks her door and keys in the alarm code (her father really was a stickler for security measures), his breath warm on the exposed nape of her neck. “I’ll deliver,” he murmurs. 

She doesn’t doubt that for a moment. 

*

Dinner is Italian, one of her favorite little restaurants that she brings her parents and friends to when they visit. Of course, she has never brought Declan here before; she can only assume Pack interference on his choice of restaurant. She doesn’t mind in the least. It’s nice to think that whatever this is has support 

“I did not need to dress up so much for this little place,” she says as they walk out into the darkening streets. She is content and full and so utterly pleased at his lingering gazes, the curve of his arm around her waist. 

“You look beautiful,” he says, the sincerity ringing in every word. 

She leans up and kisses his cheek, nestled close to his side as they walk in the direction of the theaters. “So where now?”

He slips his hand into his coat pocket and produces two slim tickets, which she takes in her hand, skimming the print with eager eyes. 

“The ballet?” she asks, startled. “ _Coppelia_?”

His arm tightens around her waist. “I figure you don’t get out a lot, with school and all. I asked – “ he pauses, clearing his throat. “I asked your mom – I remember you guys used to go to the ballet when you were little, and it’s not the Moscow Ballet or anything, but – “

Gripping the tickets in her fingers, she stops them in place on the sidewalk and reaches up to kiss him, her eyes filling. This thoughtful, solid man who has known her for so long; she thinks she may fall deeply, slide in so far she may never recover. A cool breeze slinks between her legs and she curls closer to him, opening her mouth under his and kissing him much too deeply for a public sidewalk. She doesn’t give a damn. 

“Thank you,” she says softly as their lips part. She wonders just how much of her affection shines through in her eyes. 

Whatever he sees, it makes him smile. He squeezes her hip and tugs her along as they begin to walk again. She holds onto the tickets like talismans, like totems. Real paper under her fingertips, something solid and true; like Declan. 

*

“Thank you,” Elena says again as they wait for the elevator in her apartment building. The night doorman keeps glancing over with a knowing smile. Elena can’t help but grin back. “This was really wonderful.”

Declan keeps his arm around her waist, leaning against her. “I wish I could say I understood what was happening. But the dancers were great. Athletes, really,” he murmurs. 

“I haven’t been in over two years,” she says as the elevator dings. The doors open and they scurry in, the space theirs alone this late at night. “When Mama and Papa are in town, we try to go. But I’ve been so busy with school – my IQ is nothing like theirs. I have to work for every grade.”

“When you were twelve, you sat me down and explained the metaphors of _The Stranger_ to me,” he says dryly, his eyes unrelenting on her. She shivers. “Don’t sell yourself short.”

The elevator doors shut with a noiseless sweep. She is suddenly very aware of his arm around her, his long muscled body hot against hers. 

“You just walking me to my door?” she asks after a moment, as his palm flattens on the small of her back. Even through her dress and her coat, she can feel the warmth of him. 

He looks down at her, gaze hot and intent. “If you want me to.”

She glances at their fuzzy reflections in the stainless steel of the elevator doors, the numbers creeping up to the sixth floor. “What if I ask you in for coffee?”

His hand flexes against her. “I would come in.”

The elevator stops seamlessly. Wetting her lips, she reaches down to take his hand in hers. Her fingers spread as they link into his, her hand lean and slim in his broad grip. 

“So, come in for coffee,” she says softly. 

A grin flickers across his lips, rare and sweet to her gaze. “Yeah?”

She doesn’t speak. Instead, she pulls him out of the elevator and into the hallway, walking towards her apartment door. His thumb brushes over the back of her hand and she shivers. 

“Elena, wait,” he murmurs as she keys in her code and unlocks her door. 

The door half-open, she turns to look at her, her heart in her throat. “Did I – I thought – “

“I don’t just want tonight,” he says in a low rush of words, his face dusky with a flush. “I want – I want to see you. A lot. Or as much as you want. Or less. Whatever you want. I just – “

Caitlin had been right, she thinks as she watches him. The nervousness comes off of him in waves, even as his face is impassive. He could be utterly undone by her. She’s certain he would recover in time, get over whatever small unraveling she was the cause of. 

She doesn’t want him to. 

“Come inside, Declan,” she says softly, pulling him along. 

He follows, watches in silence as she locks the door and sets the alarm. Shrugging off her coat, she hangs it up by the front door. Declan is motionless, a broad statue of muscle and strength in her living room. 

“You noticed this?” she asks, holding up her left wrist. His bracelet dangles, gleaming in the low yellow lamplight, glancing rainbows against her dark skin. 

She can see him swallow as he nods. 

Inhaling deeply, she walks over to him and takes his hands in hers, skin to skin. The contact is a rush to her senses; she has grown up with physical affection and love of all kinds, but she knows that this – whatever it is – this is different. 

“I’ve worn it every day since you gave it to me,” she says softly. 

His mental shields relax entirely. She takes in his relief, his surprise, his affection, his desire, filters it through her own, lets the emotions buoy her and lift her spirits. When he dips his head with a smile, she feels it in her bones. He lets go of her hands to wrap his arms around her waist and bring her flush to his chest, his mouth slanting over hers in a long, hot kiss. Every inch of her skin is sensitized, her pulse a drumbeat in her veins. He kisses her slowly, exploring the rise and fall of her lips, the slick wet heat of her mouth, as if he is savoring the moment never to come again. 

Elena slips her arms around his neck and twines her fingers in his hair, determined to do this for as long as they both shall live. 

His hands slide over her ribs, the curves of her waist, the round of her hip. He walks her back, his large lean hands moving against the soft cotton of her dress. When she feels the resistance of the wall against her back, she leans into it, pulling him close. She wants the press of his skin everywhere. She opens her eyes into the psychic plane and looks into herself, her shields, sees the shimmer and vibration, signifying the strength of her emotions, of _his_. 

She opens her eyes when he pulls his mouth away from hers, bracketing her in between his arms as he leans over her, his forearms resting on the wall behind her. Their gazes meet and he smiles, that secret slow smile that belongs to her. She can see the wolf in his eyes, lurking, wanting her. 

“Hi,” she says softly, every inch of her quivering with need. 

Declan’s smile deepens. She thinks she can feel it in her bones. “Hello, love.”

He stays the night. The pet name sticks.

*

In a pale blue winter dawn, she draws her lips over his elbow. 

“Weird place to focus your attentions,” he mumbles, cheek creased from her pillows. 

Naked with him, she nestles against his side and traces the defined lines of muscle and bone along his arm. He keeps her warm where she would take a chill, even with the blankets tucked up around her waist. 

“You broke your arm for me here,” she murmurs. 

He rolls onto his back, eyes bleary with sleep. “I remember,” he says, voice like gravel. 

She kisses his elbow once more. “You caught me,” she whispers. 

Declan’s hand closes over the nape of her neck. It is a possession she doesn’t refute. 

“I’ll always catch you,” he says. She has the distinct sensation of hearing both the man and the wolf in his promise. 

“I know,” she says. Their kiss in the dim light seals it, an odd troth. When she touches her knuckles to her sternum, she feels the warmth and glow of that promise. 

“I’ll catch you too,” she whispers against his skin, and feels that small genuine smile in return. 

*

“Will you forgive me if I have no damn idea what your thesis is about?” Declan asks one Tuesday night in February, stretched out on her couch in her living room. Chinese take-out boxes litter the coffee table, ravaged by a hungry changeling wolf. While outside is damp and chilly, Elena’s apartment is warm, yellow with lamplight and the glow of the entertainment screen. 

Elena, sitting up with her knees tucked under her and his head in her lap, laughs. “Yes.”

“Good. Because I have no idea, other than it’s about books,” he murmurs.

She cards her fingers through his thick silky dark hair, relishing the permission touch. “An analysis and conjecture on the appearance of Psy in Silent-era literature,” she says.

His eyes narrow. He turns his head on her lap, nuzzling into her thigh, and she smiles. “What the hell does that mean?” 

“Usually Psy were enemies in literature – since most literature, and entertainment in general, became a human and changeling concept. However, there are some instances of popular literature where Psys are not seen strictly as the enemy. I’m looking at those instances and attempting to contextualize them in conjunction to their popularity,” she says. 

Smirking slightly, he lays a hand on her knee and squeezes. “Love, I have a small idea of what that means. Also, it’s incredibly hot when you talk like that.”

“This is my normal voice,” she protests. 

His hand squeezes again, skin warm through the denim of her jeans. She slides her fingers to his shoulders and begins to rub gently. Here is a man with everything to prove, a weight to burden in the shape of his parents; she understands, more than most, what kind of pressure that is. 

“What does it mean?” he asks, groaning in contentment as she massages his shoulders. 

Biting her lip, she sinks her fingers into the hard knots of his shoulders. “Not all Psy were seen as others,” she says softly. “Some authors longed for times without Silence, and wrote of them.”

She clears her throat, glancing down to find him watching her. “Or, so I argue,” she says with a slight smile. 

“You and your books,” he murmurs, sitting up and crawling over her on the sofa with a quick movement that demonstrates his changeling speed. She lays back with a smile, the loom of his body over hers a comfort rather than a fright. “You’ve always loved them.”

“They were good friends. They still are,” she says. 

His gaze glints, hinting amber. “And what next?” he asks as he settles his weight over her, pressing her into the sofa. 

“I don’t know, really,” she murmurs. “Papa says there’s plenty of room for an empath placement, if I wanted one.”

“Do you?” he asks, stroking stray curls away from her face. 

She shrugs as best she can. “I like my books,” she says softly. “I’d like – I don’t know. I’d like to show others how wonderful all these different books from the different races can be.”

He leans in and nuzzles her neck, kissing along the exposed slopes of her collarbones. “A teacher.”

“Maybe,” she says, her hands flattening on his back. “For now, I’d just like to get the damn thesis done.”

Raising his head, he watches her with careful dark eyes. “You will,” he murmurs, and kisses her mouth gently. 

Though he says he doesn’t understand what she does, Elena thinks he might understand her more than anyone else ever has. 

*

“Hi, Mama,” Elena says, distracted. 

In her bedroom, she sits in the middle of her mattress, surrounded by books. San Francisco suffers through a rainy February all the way into March, icy rain smearing her bedroom window. She is not as far along on her thesis as she’d like to be, distracted as she has been by her other classes, and Declan. When her mother visual-comms her on a Wednesday afternoon, she wants to press ignore; but it would be the third time this week, and she doesn’t want a concerned surprise visit from either or both of her parents, not now. 

On the screen of her datapad, Sahara’s warm lovely face smiles up at her. “Hi, princess. How are you?”

“Bemoaning the lack of information concerning cross-racial literature in a Silent Psy world,” Elena murmurs. “And rainy.”

“Sounds about right,” Sahara says softly, those deep blue eyes questioning her. 

Elena sets her books and notes aside and wets her lips. She has been quiet in regards to Declan with her parents and others – really, only Caitlin (and Regan, because Caitlin can’t keep anything from her mate) knows that they’re seeing each other. Elena has never kept anything quite like this from her parents; but there is something deep within her that wants to keep Declan to herself. Special, secret; there is no shame in their relationship – such as it is – but she wants to preserve this. 

(She also might be terrified of telling her father that she’s in love with a changeling wolf. But that’s another silly story.)

Still. It’s something to think about, to at least tell her mother. 

“You look happy,” Sahara says after a few moments of conversation, her dark hair braided back from her face. Elena can see just a few silver strands in the braid, though her mother looks as young and fresh of face as ever. “Very happy.”

Elena flushes. “Oh. Well. School is almost done.”

“Is that all?” Sahara asks, smiling playfully. 

“Sure,” Elena murmurs. She can hear the turn of the front door beyond her bedroom, a signal of Declan’s arrival. She gave him a key to her apartment last week; she remembers the look on his face when she gave him the little box, his face softening in utter affection. To see his face so exposed is a gift she knows is hers alone. 

“Mama, I should go. Give Papa my love.”

Sahara’s smile deepens. “We’d like to come visit soon, baby. Let us know when a good weekend would be. Papa misses you.”

“I know. I miss you guys too,” she says, letting the love for them suffuse her outermost shields. As she relaxes her shields outward, she can sense the press and swell of Declan in the apartment, a hard knot of tension. “Soon.”

She signs off with a smile and sets the datapad aside. A little swell of nausea rises in her belly as she climbs off the bed. Declan appears in the doorway as she straightens up, his face tautly lined. 

“Hi,” she says quietly, inhaling. 

His large frame fills the doorway. “Hi,” he says shortly. 

“I didn’t know you were coming by,” she says, tilting her head curiously. They have something of a set schedule; Tuesdays and Saturdays, he has nights off that he spends with her, holed up in her apartment or going out for dinner. It isn’t enough – it doesn’t feel like enough. But it works with his shifts and her class schedule, and she accepts it well enough. 

When he doesn’t say anything, she watches him carefully. Tension leeches off of him, his muscles tight under his sweater. She reaches out with gentle psychic arms, touching the soft dark points in his aura. 

“Elena – “ he says, voice like gravel. 

“What happened?” she asks, walking over and fitting herself against his chest. 

His arms go around her immediately. They stand in the doorway, locked together. She can feel his wolf under his skin. He doesn’t say anything, just presses his lips to her hair and holds her locked to him. His tension eases as she filters it away, rubbing her hands over the line of his back. She knows his bare skin as if it is her own now; it is a thought that holds her, brightens her day. 

“It can’t have been very bad, or else – someone would have told me,” she says softly. “Right?”

He cups her face in his hands and kisses her once, twice. He is solid strength and warmth, reliable and steady and with smiles only for her. The love she has for him is years, decades old; she doesn’t know how to express it in words. Instead, she digs her fingers into the nape of his neck and kisses him back. 

“It’s fine,” he says at last, leaning his brow against hers. “I just – a bad shift. And I missed you. I needed to see you.”

Affection blooms in her chest. She holds him closer, her lips touching his neck. There are marks from his mouth that litter her collarbones, her belly, the side of her breast; she likes to mark him in turn. She knows she belongs to him; she wants him to belong to her in turn. These two months of dinners and dates, of long afternoons in her bed, of his surprising her in the library at school with coffee and muffins as a study break – she likes it. She loves him. She wants everything and more. To be so selfish has never occurred to her, before him. 

“I’m glad you came,” she whispers, tugging him into her room. 

“You’re – you’re busy,” he mumbles. “Elena – “

She pushes the books off her bed and pulls him down with her, stretching out over him as he relaxes on his back. Leaning up over him on her elbow, she smooths her palm over his hair, his jaw. She kisses him softly on the mouth, aching with the need to tell him her heart. 

“What happened?” she asks again. Her empathy is not pushy; but she knows when she needs to press.

He looks at her with brooding dark eyes, his hand slipping over her spine and under the hem of her t-shirt. The rain is heavy on her window, the world grey and smothering outside. “Liam got injured on a perimeter shift. It was pretty bad.”

“Oh,” she murmurs, her heart aching. She rubs her palm over his sternum, his skin hot through the knit of his sweater. “He’s okay?”

Letting out a slow breath, he nods. “Yeah. But Dad and Mom were shaken up. They looked – they looked torn up.”

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, curling up to his side. She kisses his jaw, slides her hand under his sweater to touch bare skin. “If he’s anything like you and your dumb siblings, I’m sure he’s already trying to get out of bed and go back onto patrol though.”

Surprisingly, he smiles a little bit. “This is why I love you,” he says quietly. “You just – you get me.”

She stills, watching him carefully. “I – I try,” she whispers. 

Blinking slowly, he reaches up to twine his fingers into her hair, wild curls along her shoulders today. “I love you.”

Her empathic shields shiver and glow with the confession, the emotion response leaving her breathless. “I love you too,” she says quietly. Her voice trembles. She does not give her emotions so freely. 

A smile as blinding as any she’s seen spreads on his face. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she says, laughing. 

“Good. That means I can tell you that we’re in the mating dance,” he says with a smirk. 

“Declan!” she exclaims, her cheeks hot.

He laughs, pulling her down onto his chest and kissing her until she cannot breathe, until she doesn’t want to breathe. “You mad?”

Anything but. She sinks into the happy buzz of their confession, almost drunk on the sheer pleasure. It is undiluted love, sharp and permanent and all-encompassing. 

“We have to tell people,” she whispers. 

“People know. They scented it,” he murmurs as he turns her onto her back, pressing her into the bed. He nuzzles into the curve of her neck, breathing in deeply. “I love having my scent on your skin,” he breathes. 

She sighs, enfolding him into her arms. “We have to tell my parents.”

“Fuck,” he groans. “Jesus Christ, your dad is going to kill me.”

“I told you he likes you,” she says, delighted. 

“Not enough to not kill me for being with his only daughter,” he mutters. 

Elena can’t help but laugh, high as a kite as she peels off his sweater, searching for all bare skin and heat. “I’ll protect you,” she whispers, wrapping her legs around his waist and holding on. 

“You better,” he mumbles, licking at the line of her throat. 

(Her father goes a little pale, when they do tell him, over lunch in San Francisco a week later. Her mother is delighted.

Elena, her shields utterly open to Declan in anticipation of the solidification of the bond to come, just curls her fingers around his and smiles.)

*


End file.
